INCULPATUS
Pentameters

NOT the cheeriest of plays. Claustrophobia suffocates the characters in Inculpatus – and the audience is made to feel it too. This is certainly not comfortable viewing. Just as the characters felt trapped in the play, so did I at times.
The play shows how lies lead to jealousy and exposes prejudice and narrow mindedness in a small village.
The play is one of Kim Loe’s first ventures as a playwright, and having grown up in an East Anglian village, he is obviously writing with experience of small-town life, and even manages to find comedy in the depressingly abusive relationships he has so sharply observed.
Laura, sent to the city at 13 for an abortion, never came back, leaving her resentful sister Kate behind. Laura is branded a family-destroying slag, and receives death threats – village gossip at its most poisonous.
The villain of the piece is Auntie Maureen, a selfish and lonely old woman who orchestrates the vicious rumours. She instructs Laura, pregnant by her son Teddy, to have an abortion and to lie about the father. In the end Laura is made an outcast and Teddy dies, so Maureen loses him anyway.
Hamish Gray, who plays the cowardly husband Erroll, has a commanding presence, and is easily the star of the show. All the actors were very good though.
The Pentameters theatre has had a string of plays featuring strong women, and this is no exception. Maureen is a horiffic and terrifying example of twisted matriarchy, while Kate is a bitter and frustrated bullying wife. Laura, the only ‘normal’ character, defeats her foe at the end.
None of the women were positive examples of femininity though, and the men were even worse.

Until July 30
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